The Atomic Duty

of United States Veterans

1946 to 1980

June 2017 ~~ Revamping the Atomic Veterans History Project (AVHP). Both the web site and the archives are being reorganized with a few additions and fixing a lot of broken links. The AVHP was created and maintained by Keith R. Whittle for more than a decade. When he was a child, riding with his family from California to Oklahoma returning from a vacation, he saw outside his car window the bright flash of an atomic detonation. He was 9 years old. It lit up the desert from pre-dawn darkness to brighter than noon light. It was something he would never forget.

Later when trying to search for details, knowing the year he was there, he was able to figure out which test so he could discover which bomb was detonated. Refining the date was easy: it was July 4, 1957. Remembering how he was missing the cousin's fireworks set in his mind the date that they left. His uncle and his mom wanted to get back home. The trip began so that they would be driving through the desert during the night so the desert heat wouldn't be so bad. In the days of no air conditioning this was a common decision. After the bright light lit up their surroundings, Uncle tuned into a local radio station just in time to hear that the Nevada Test Site had again set off one of their "experimental devices."

April 1996 ~~ Whittle's story was the first personal atomic history web site posted on the Internet in HTML. His story is told: Anno Atomi 11, Growing Up With The Atom. After Whittle posted his story, he became interested in the idea of posting a veteran's story in a web site. About five years before, we had attended a lecture in downtown Portland at a lecture hosted by the Oregon Physicians for Social Responsiblity where a veteran, Bill Bires, told his story to attendees. Keith was interested in the history even then, but we didn't have a way to tell the story. I had saved his name in my notes from that night. I guess it is my journalism training that makes me take notes. It worked out good for us this time. Whittle contacted Bires and soon we were building another atomic history web site: The Atomic Duty of Pvt. Bill Bires.

Check back later as we add more stories from our archives and work to revamp this site to give you full measure of what we have in our history archives. Watch for our links to light up as we choose a new veteran each time to fill out our Atomic Tests table. Thanks for visiting.